Exploring the links between militarized socialization and social inequality in Israel, the authors aim to examine both the pattern of political socialization, which extols the role of the combat soldier as the emblem of the "good citizen," and the ways by which social agents themselves respond to this socialization. Although an all-encompassing phenomenon, the authors find militarized socialization is not equally "distributed" or "received." Rather, it reflects and reproduces the class and ethnic positions of its various recipients. Based on interviews with male soldiers in a wide range of military roles, the authors identify two types of responses to militarized socialization: (a) a dominant response of conformity and obedience, mainly expressed in the unquestioning acceptance of military service in a combat role, and (b) an ambivalent response, of simultaneous acceptance of and resistance to this ideal. In a more comparative vein, the authors argue that military service does not simply reproduce ethnic and class inequalities but rather, by molding the soldiers' conceptions of citizenship, is still a powerful mechanism of legitimizing a hegemonic militarized and class-differentiated social order.

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This article is a product of in-depth research in Yaffa, The Arab Democratic School that was carried out in 2004/05, as part of a study on alternative Arab education in Israel. Its aim, beyond telling the story of Yaffa, is to explicate the motivations that underlay this initiative, and to examine parental choice amongst the disadvantaged. We ask how the Arabs' parental choice is affected by their (marginalised) social location, by how far they are from the dominant culture, and by their (in)capacity to make a difference. Apparently, to make a choice is a multidimensional act, reflecting the Palestinian citizens' resistance to their marginalisation and unwillingness to be subjugated through non-democratic educational perceptions. Their positionality resonates in Yaffa, as an act of intervention, and their search for an alternative reality where democratic education is not and cannot be separated from the Palestinian citizens' need to imagine themselves as Arabs.

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